condition of the tenant after the proprietor has retired from social production in order to speculate upon the labor of others by new methods.
Let us now return to our first hypothesis.
The nine hundred laborers, sure that their future production will equal that of the past, are quite surprised, after paying their farm-rent, to find themselves poorer by one-tenth than they were the previous year. In fact, this tenth — which was formerly produced and paid by the proprietor-laborer who then took part in the production, and paid part of the public expenses—now has not been produced, and has been paid. It must then have been taken from the producer’s consumption. To choke this inexplicable deficit, the laborer borrows, confident of his intention and ability to return,—a confidence which is shaken the following year by a new loan, plus the interest on the first. From whom does he borrow? From the proprietor. The proprietor lends his surplus to the laborer; and this surplus, which he ought to return, becomes—being lent at interest—a new source of profit to him. Then debts increase indefinitely; the proprietor makes advances to the producer who never returns them; and the latter, constantly robbed and constantly borrowing from the robbers, ends in bankruptcy, defrauded of all that he had.
Suppose that the proprietor—who needs his tenant to furnish him with an income—then releases him from his debts. He will thus do a very benevolent deed, which will procure for him a recommendation in the curate’s prayers; while the poor tenant, overwhelmed by this unstinted charity, and taught by his catechism to pray for his benefactors, will promise to redouble his energy, and suffer new hardships that he may discharge his debt to so kind a master.
This time he takes precautionary measures; he raises the
